PhronesisChronic noise-avoidance is the compulsion to minimize ambient stimulation and acoustic complexity across contexts — not as deliberate rest, but as a default mode of environmental management. This paper frames chronic noise-avoidance as a wrong attractor W in the Phronesis state-space model, operating against the ground state S^0 of calibrated selective immersion. We introduce the Quiet-Maximization Architecture (QMA), a self-reinforcing cognitive and behavioral system in which overstimulation-anxiety drives systematic avoidance of rich sensory environments, gradually foreclosing the person from full engagement with varied, stimulating contexts.
The Rich-Environment Foreclosure Basin (REFB) names the attractor landscape that locks this avoidance in place: each successful escape from complexity lowers the person's tolerance threshold, deepening the basin and raising the cost of exit. Nine propositions characterize the mechanism, the self-reinforcing dynamics, the identity capture, the social and experiential costs, and the return pathway.
The return requires voluntary, graduated immersion in rich environments — not willpower applied once, but a systematic program of tolerance expansion that re-anchors the person in S^0: stable not because the world is quiet, but because the self is calibrated.